Exams! Exams!
Exams!
As an educator, I always think about ways of improving my lessons, teaching methods and help my students to feel better in their learning progress. One of the major problems in learning something is the stage where students are tested to see If they maintain a successful learning progress. What we usually prefer to do is to do exams which cause lots of problems indeed. However, it seems that we have difficulties in finding other ways to test their knowledge.
We have to face with many exams in our lives. It is not only about school exams, but also some other tests that we have to take in other parts of life such as applying for a job. As there are many people who are competing with each other to achieve something, we must accept this reality and try to look for some ways to cope with this reality and problems that it brings into our lives. As an English teacher, I have some doubts about this system , but it seems that I have problems in creating alternative ways.
Students
I won't talk about the tests that we have to take to get jobs. As an English teacher, I am more concerned with my students who feel fed up with taking lots of exams every year. As students and their families have got many expectations about the future, it put too much pressure on students. Their parents may not understand their concerns and mental conditions since families have to be focused on other things at the same time
I try to make my students feel comfortable by telling them that exams are not the things which will make them win or lose anything in their lives. It is of course true that these are the things that will help them to shape their future. However, there are many examples of people who have become successful in their career and social lives, so we have to motivate our students by telling them some inspirational stories. It might helps them to feel less pressure.
The roles of teachers and parents
In this point, the role of teachers and parents is really important. As the stress and competition are really high between students, it might really affect their psychology since they are really young and may not handle this process. If we see them just like horses racing to be the first one in a competition, we may not expect any healthy development stages in their lives which is a bigger problem than the exams they are taking.
As an educator, I try to have some monthly meeting with their parents as well as talking to students in breaks that we give during lessons. As I said, life brings many responsibilities and parents may forget that the most important parts of their lives are their children who are in different life stages and always under pressure created by society, friends and parents of course, so there must be interaction between teachers and parents!
Alternative testing ways
As you can understand from my statements, I am not comfortable with exam system. You may ask what else we might do to change the system. If I talk about my major which is teaching English, I sometimes want them to read some books, watch videos or do presentations about whatever they like. When I do this, they feel less pressure as they can express their opinions in any topics that they want. In addition to that, they don't have any strict time obligations.
It may not be possible in all lessons, but I can say that it work pretty well in English teaching. English teaching and learning is mostly based on practicing and using it in daily life, so they may not have to have written exams. When you ask them to prepare presentations, they might practice all skills that are parts of learning a language. You might also try that in your classes.
By applying this system, you can also encourage your students to be more confident in class and life which is a big plus for them. As all educators know, lessons are not meant to be boring, they are supposed to be interesting and appealing for our students. We shouldn't forget this golden rule.
Recommendations?
Are there any recommendation that you might offer to try in our classes instead of giving them written exams? I would love to hear some ideas so that we can make the systems better for our children and all other students. Thanks for reading and I am looking forward to hearing your ideas!
Exam in every position of life.
that is sadly true.
I had an excellent physics teacher. He once told me that a good technician is not the kind of person who knows everything by heart. A good technical specialist is the one who knows where to find up-to-date information in a short time. I have followed this rule all my life.
I thought of something similar when I divided my homework into different degrees of difficulty. I tried to order ready-made solutions for the most difficult variants - https://us.thepensters.com/case-study-writing-service.html Maybe this was the first step in my understanding of managing complex processes in analytics)
I feel like there is some value in the stress of the test.. because in life we have to face all kinds of deadlines and "tests" as it were, so we may as well get used to it. The best kind of test is not about memorization, but about processing information, I think.
For example vocabulary tests are dumb. But a test where you have to use some new words and put them into paragraphs, that might be useful. Or instead of memorizing math equations, actually using math equations in some kind of meaningful way.
The more it is a "real world application," the better. The big problem with school IMO is how much we stay in the textbook due to convenience.
Yes, I think we should create more diversity when we test our students like the one you said about vocabulary tests. Thank you for sharing your opinion!